Nick now drives a truck.
And just a week or so after getting the Ford Tremor, it came in handy. That's him with a load of drinks for a Rock Star event we held for about 150 Rock Star Inner Circle VIP Members.
We grew up with trucks.
Loading drywall, taper's readymix, studs, endless boxes of screws.
I'll never forget the broken down Chevy that our father had me driving all around Toronto in the late 1980s doing deliveries to different job sites.
One time I loaded up too many metal studs and right in the middle of Hwy 401 near Yorkdale Mall a bunch fell out in the center lane of the highway.
Knowing that our father wouldn't be impressed, I pulled over, and then played frogger...jumping into traffic to pick up those bundles of studs.
Not the smartest move by a longshot!! Just happy no one got hurt!
So upon reflection, driving around water, pop, wine and vodka is a much better experience!!
And trucks have come a long way. Nick's Tremor is absolutely gorgeous inside, a real beauty.
You know what's NOT beautiful right now?
The Bank of Canada.
Multiple people fired over a Globe & Mail article about their recent money losing ways.
In this week's Rock Star Minutes, we share some thoughts on this.
And we share some of the latest population and immigration numbers we're all seeing.
Canada is increasing its immigration target to 500K people per year.
This isn't a bad thing at all...but when you look at the latest housing supply numbers things get a tad concerning.
You can check it all out in this week's Rock Star Minutes video by clicking right here.
When we were younger we believed that those in power somehow knew what they were doing.
That they had graduated from great universities, had above average intelligence, and deeply understood things like economics.
We now know that so many people in very powerful positions in our government and at the Bank of Canada, although they may be good people, often have a very weak understanding of how free markets work.
And because they don't understand economics they introduce policies that make things worse instead of making them better.
Case in point...
They bail out the banks constantly.
If any bank gets in trouble or is holding "bad assets", they will literally buy those assets from the banks to "fix the bank's balance sheets" and to provide "liquidity to the markets".
And they do it in the name of preserving a safe and stable banking system for all Canadians.
It sounds great.
But when you save banks from themselves what you're really doing is rewarding them for being bad risk managers.
What that then does is lead to even more risk taking, more bad decisions, and more poor investments.
This then ultimately leads to more bailouts and more money printing.
And those rewarded by new money printing are those closest to the new money.
So the bankers win again.
(Quick Aside: it's why we like investment real estate, it's the closest 'regular people' can get to becoming a bank and getting first access to newly created fiat dollars.)
The general population deals with the mess of the Bank of Canada's actions...inflation, deflation, lack of wage growth, high house prices, lack of highways, lack of hospital beds etc.
And people begin pointing fingers at each other over whose fault these things are. It creates angst in the population.
The bottom line is that at the base of all of this is economics.
And at the base of economics is money.
When you manipulate the money you distort the entire economy.
And the distortions having been going on for so long, and are getting so big, that we can't hide from them any longer.
It's why we expect even more volatility in all things going forward: real estate, stock markets, Bitcoin...all of it.
When you price things in dollars and the amount of those dollars are constantly manipulated at a faster rate...you get more volatility in prices, faster.
We could rant about this forever.
For this week, that's enough!
The good news is that even with all of this madness, if you pay attention, educate yourself and research this stuff, we believe, you can stay ahead of it all.
You can survive and even thrive.
Hope you're having a great week out there!!
Tom & Nick
